Wildlife Preserves

Lesson 5: Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

Our next stop is the desert refuge called Bosque del Apache (boss-kay dell ah-'patch-ee), in south central New Mexico. This refuge is famous among wildlife photographers who seek spectacular scenes of huge flocks of sandhill cranes and snow geese against a backdrop of purple desert mountains.

History

This refuge straddles the great Rio Grande River and is located on the El Camino Royal (Spanish for The Royal Road) between Old Mexico and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Spanish word bosque means woods, or a small grove of trees, and the Indians who lived in the valley for over 700 years found food, shelter and farmland in the rich bottomlands along the river. White hunters and settlers took over the valley by the late 1800s, and soon native flood plain forest groves were stripped of trees, wildlife was hunted excessively, cattle grazing along the river denuded the bottomlands, and drainage canals dried up the marshes and lakes.

In 1939, a national wildlife refuge was created encompassing over 57,000 acres of land along the Rio Grande between the Chupadera Mountains on the west and the San Pascual Mountains on the east. The Civilian Conservation Corps built refuge headquarters buildings just before World War II. In 1975, 30,287 acres within the refuge were designated as wilderness area, with access by motorized vehicles prohibited to further protect birds and animals living in or passing through the refuge.

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